Written evidence from Royal Mail (RGE 31)

Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee 

Review of the 2024 general election inquiry

Thank you for inviting us to give evidence on Royal Mail’s role in the 2024 general election at the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee on 21st January.

We said we would come back to you on four specific points but, before I do, I would like to again

reiterate that we take the role we play in delivering democracy extremely seriously and I am proud of the efforts our people went to during the general election. We had a relentless operational focus on election mail to ensure its timely delivery throughout the campaign and our well-laid plans meant we were properly prepared to deliver the best possible performance.

1)                    Operational support team

You asked how many times we had to deploy our operational support or “fix it” team during the general election. The team was on standby throughout the period. Members of the team were deployed across six delivery offices in the week commencing 1st July as a precautionary measure. They found no need for extra support in the last few days before the election on 4th July.

2)                    Statistics on election mail performance during the election

You asked about what further information we can provide on election mail performance during the election. As set out in our previous letter to the Committee, over the course of the six-week campaign we delivered a record 50.8 million poll cards, 7.5 million completed postal votes and 184 million pieces of candidate mail.

Poll cards can be sent directly through Royal Mail or indirectly through a downstream access provider. Some local authorities also deliver them themselves. Where they are sent directly, they are covered by our delivery targets for First and Second Class. Where they are sent indirectly, they are covered by our downstream access standards for our Standard and Economy products.

Every local authority chose to include a First Class response service in its ballot packs for this general election. As a result, postal votes handed to Royal Mail in time were delivered as planned. This was the result of actions outlined in our previous letter and our oral evidence, such as the purple strip on the envelope, the work with local authorities to provide daily ‘set time’ dedicated deliveries of returned postal votes and the final sweep of mail centres and delivery offices which meant that we were able to identify postal votes and expedite their return.

Every candidate standing in the election was entitled to send one communication (what we call candidate mail) to each elector. We delivered 184 million items of candidate mail and over 99% of this mail was delivered to the target delivery date.

3)                    Rural and urban deliveries

You asked if there is a difference between our overall performance in urban and rural areas. We would not make a distinction between rural or urban areas and in fact many of our delivery offices serve a mix of urban, suburban and rural communities. Our aim is to deliver a high quality, reliable service to all parts of the UK. Where we have challenges, we have taken action to improve recruitment and retention, reduce sick absence and modernise our network and ways of working. We would note that, as shown by our reported performance across postcode areas, problems with recruitment and retention are often amplified in areas where the cost of living is high e.g. Oxford and/or the labour market is tight e.g. Maidstone.

4)                    International postal votes

You asked about international postal votes. We worked with our international postal partners to deliver ballot packs to overseas voters and expediate the return of postal votes. We did this through formal and informal channels, including the UN’s Universal Postal Union (UPU) and their Emergency Information System (EmIS). We followed up with a number of our counterparts, including those in countries with large numbers of UK citizens. In total, we sent 83,000 ballot packs abroad and 50,000 postal votes were returned. These are mixed with other mail at our international mail centre, Heathrow Worldwide Distribution Centre, and we do not record the volumes to each country. While we believe local authorities are better placed to provide further data on overseas voters, I would repeat our concerns around the challenges that come due to the deadlines for registering as an overseas voter which means there is very little time to deliver postal votes to overseas voters and return them before polling day.

February 2025